Give up bad friends

After I started practicing meditation, one of the first things that I discovered was how insecure I felt about myself. Since I was a kid, I was not satisfied with who I was. In my eyes, I was never good enough.

I was sitting in a café with some friends a few months after I got in touch with this realization, and I noticed how most of our conversation enforced each other’s insecurities by blaming others, our society, our culture or the environment. During this conversation, I felt tension in my chest, my breathing was short and fast, and I felt this rush of energy saying that I was not ok the way I was.

As time passed, I started to notice the feeling of insecurity in many different areas of my life including work, family, my romantic relationship and in my own beliefs about myself. This fear of feeling not good enough played so many different roles in my day-to-day life.

I started to connect with my aspiration of life to be free from my belief that I was not good enough and that nothing was ever good enough. I tried to express this aspiration to my old friends but I learned that they had no interest in it. Even after I realized that I had a different motivation in life than my old friends, it was challenging to give up old friendships due to my fear of disconnection, isolation and loneliness.

So, I slowly increased my time away from my old friends and started to learn how to be my own friend. Whenever I noticed the feeling of insecurity, I said out loud to myself, “Dawn, I really love you and you are amazing”. This often brought tears to my eyes. A few months later, I reached a tipping point where I could no longer enjoy time with my old friends and I felt peace in my time alone.

It became so clear to me that these old friendships were not benefiting anybody. After spending many months away from my old friends, my own intentions of life became clearer and I was able to meet some new friends who have been helping me to walk on the mindfulness path.